Critic Reviews

Age of Sail 2 is a wonderful game, suitable for Everyone (though it does sport realistic violence), with tremendous details, terrific historical backgrounds, and marvelous game play. If you have never played a real-time strategy combat sim before, this is the game that will give you a great introduction to the genre. If you have played RTS products, this program deserves a place on your shelf.

Alike the original Age of Sail game, Age of Sail II lets you control each ship's sail configuration, speed, course, ammo, and weapon aiming. The interface in game is at once functional, informative, and easy to use. In addition the game includes an all-important time-acceleration option - game speed can be accelerated to either 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x or 32x, or it can be paused. Age of Sail II is very good looking strategy game, if you liked original Age of Sail you will more than satisfied.

But like I said at the start (well, maybe not at the start, but it's somewhere up there), this is the only game in town as far as Fighting Sail games go. Sea Dogs is fantastic, but it's got much more of an individual piracy focus. But I don't want to make this like your grandpa tells you, "You're my favorite grandchild," and then you're all like, "But I'm your only grandchild." It's more than that. Age of Sail II isn't just a good game because of the dearth of competitors; it's a good game in it's own right. There are plenty of problems with it, but it still delivers a reasonably accurate simulation of the Wooden World with a little bit of fun thrown in for good measure.

Many game developers tried to capture the true atmosphere of sea combat over the last couple of years. Regardless of the time and place they chose for their games, those games turned out to be failures, with the possible exception of Silent Hunter serial. The first part of Age of Sail used a real-time strategy engine, which reduced this game to a bunch of ambiguous controls and monotonous battles. The development of the sequel was entrusted to the Russian "Akella Software" (who developed the recent hit - Sea Dogs), and the renowned "Talonsoft" published it. I have to admit that this is the first game of this kind that got my full attention.

AGE OF SAIL II comes closer than any other game to simulating tactical naval warfare in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those who love that era would be doing themselves a disservice to miss it. Those who lack patience with nagging bugs and unrealistic design decisions should steer clear of it. In short, AOS2 isn’t a decorated admiral, but it is certainly a competent commodore.

Without a doubt, TalonSoft's Age of Sail II is the best serious simulation of fighting sail combat to date. However, since its competition includes lackluster games such as the original Age of Sail, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, and the Man of War games, being the best in its class doesn't necessarily say much about the game. Thus even though Age of Sail II can rightfully claim "best of breed" status, it does so in spite of numerous technical bugs and other flaws. Developed by Akella, which recently made the swashbuckling role-playing game Sea Dogs, Age of Sail II is a perfect example of a game that was released before it was finished or adequately play-tested.

Functional rather than attractive, Age Of Sail II's graphics may remind some of you of last month's Sea Dogs. If so, well spotted, as Russian developer Akella is responsible for both games, and while Age Of Sail II may seem like a cut-down version, it has its place. My interest in the period is inspired only by pirate flicks of the 1930s, so I'd have to say that Sea Dogs is a better, more interesting game. But then, what do I know?

Age of Sail II comes across to me as a title that should be aimed at the specific niche of strategy enthusiasts. Technically, this game was shifted towards release prematurely. Even though I have only experienced one of the show-stopping crashes, potential buyers should be aware that some features simply fail to work as advertised out-of-the-box. What saves Age of Sail II from the abysmal fate that many people on Akella’s message boards claim it deserves is the excellent quality of the overall presentation in the music, graphics and sound systems. Purchasing this product may be a risk for some gamers with the many bug reports floating around, but anyone fortunate enough to avoid the more serious bugs will find a wealth of wonderful historic scenarios to play. The recently released patches allegedly solve many of the reported problems, but this still leaves Age of Sail II floating along with quite a bit of damaged rigging and a few holes in the hull.

So with all the myriad of problems, can Age of Sail 2 possibly be fun to play? Well, yes and no. I'll admit that I'm not quite the right demographic for the game -- my interests lie more in real-time strategy games than in historical war games -- and so you can take the following with a grain of salt. But from my perspective, Age of Sail 2 is a little too simplistic when few ships are involved, and it becomes unmanageable when lots of ships are involved.